


No Way Back

by were_duck



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Comfort, Depression, F/F, Misandry, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5027101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_duck/pseuds/were_duck





	No Way Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KeJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeJ/gifts).



It's the end of the world. The world is dead, and now she's going to have to get up.

Furiosa breathes into the rough skin of her forearm. The slight moisture from her parched exhalations tickle the hair there. Goosebumps. Her throat is raw, her fist is bloody from pounding her rage into the sands. There is nothing, now. She feels her lungs rise and fall, feels every ache in her body and ribs, the stabbing pain of dehydration and fury setting in just inside her temples. 

Everything she has driven herself through for the past four thousand days (and then some) has been towards the Green Place. She has made that memory the last scrap of hope, and now, with a word, the warrior women who are all that are left of her childhood family have torn that hope away with furrowed brows and gentle sorrow in their voices. 

She finds, in the end, that without hope to drive her forward, inertia will do the job just fine.

She drags herself to her feet, brushing the sand away and setting her jaw against the despair in her heart. She and most of the women she has brought are still alive, for better or worse. Someone needs to see them through to the next morning; it might as well be her. Also, she finds upon gaining her feet again that she's thirsty.

"I was wondering when we would see you again," the Valkyrie murmurs, holding an unidentifiable lump of dried ration out to Furiosa. She merely grunts, too tired to be properly grateful.

It's getting dark. One of the Vuvalini--Furiosa feels a qualm at not having taken in each of their names yet--hands Furiosa her arm. Furiosa's fingers run automatically over the buckles and moving parts. The Vuvalini had retrieved it from the desert and given the arm a cursory wipe.

The woman smiles gently at Furiosa, handing her a bundle of tools, a rag and a small pot of oil. "Thought you might rather tend it yourself," she says, winking. "Your journey was hard on your gear. Needs patching up."

"Not just the gear, I reckon. Nor the journey alone, at that," the white-haired Vuvalini puts in, dropping a half-full canteen at Furiosa's feet. Furiosa uncaps it and brings it to her lips. The steel and salt burn of it lingers at the back of her tongue. She doesn't answer. 

They make camp, shadows lengthening against the dunes. The Dag's gone in thick with the white-haired Vuvalini. She whispers to Furiosa something about seeds while they fill canteens with milk to share. Furiosa tastes the milk, nearly spitting it out. It's going sour, warm from the heat of the rig, but it's still nourishment. She has the unfamiliar urge to recognize the sacrifice of the Milk Mothers with fist to chest and palm flat to the sky.

"I never thought about saving bloody seeds. Back _there_ , they belonged to _him_ , they were just part of all that, everything grown just to die for him." The Dag wrenches the spigot closed, deftly catching the last drips in her canteen. "But from seeds, something _he_ never touched? That's something that could be. Than again, could all end in dust, just like everything else." Furiosa has no answer for that, so she doesn't speak. She wonders if her lips could just fuse shut. 

The women settle under the stars, their murmurs halting and uncertain. The Vuvalini are wry and gentle, careful with the younger women's space. Furiosa watches, sees the way they take space and give it. It's alien to the women from the Citadel, so used to being seen and taken, so used to every touch being uninvited and yet clinging to one another with the desperation of captivity. 

The fool, characteristically, grunts and hangs back near the war rig. Furiosa snorts to herself and joins him. She can't see what tomorrow looks like, she knows that. But she's fought too far to bring herself to disrupt the fragile web forming between those women under the stars. 

They barely speak, but she feels familiar near him, if only in contrast to the way she suddenly feels like an afterthought to the tenuous bonds building between the women. Even Cheedo has shyly slid herself under the arm of one of the warrior women. For all her simmering hatred of the men that have ruled and ruined her life and her ardent desire to rejoin the women she was born to, Furiosa finds herself standing aloof. Her mind is a black tangle, and in this moment only tactile familiarity brings her any sense of comfort. 

The fool is watching her closely. His gaze makes her skin itch. He clears his throat and she says, voice pitched low with suppressed anger, "Don't."

He coughs. 

"I don't need your pity," she says, after a minute.

"No. You don't," he rumbles, "I don't pity you. Don't much envy you, either."

"Yeah," she sighs, wiping a grimy hand across her forehead. It feels traitorous, but she misses the baths in the Citadel. The rest of that snakepit can burn as far as she's concerned, but the luxury of cleanliness was always going to be tough to leave behind. She's tired of the grit in her teeth and the raw spots she can feel rubbing into her ribs under her belts. "I know. They still need someone. Maybe me."

"Sure," he says, and she can sense the way he relaxes a bit, his slouch going softer against the giant tire of the rig. "Maybe," he agrees, and she can hear the lack of surprise and doubt in the word. 

He shoves off to pace the perimeter of their camp, done with this heart-to-heart. She's relieved, finally, to be left alone with her bitterness. They'll be heading across the salt flats in the morning, and her despair and hope tangle with her tactician's practicality, turning the uncertain future over and over in her mind. She broods on her incomplete knowledge of their new companions, the scant fuel in the bikes and rig, the even more meager provisions. How many of the women whose names she doesn't yet know will die? Will there be anyone left to pound a fist to chest, palm to sky in memory of any of their names? 

She wishes Splendid had lived. She had been a regal lightning rod, energizing and polarizing. Furiosa can barely remember how to act that way, to paint a strong mask on and chivvy hearts and actions. All of her hope had led from her memory and her heart. There's so little to promise past dropping her head and shoving forward, ahead, anywhere. There's so little left for any of them, and no way for her to plan their way through.

"Come," the Valkyrie says, her soft footfalls barely telegraphing her approach. She stops and waits, proferring a wide strong hand. Furiosa considers ignoring her, but the scent of motor oil and rich human sweat untainted by zinc and zealotry overcomes her moment of obstinacy. 

The Valkyrie's fingers are callused and greasy-rough, and the tickling texture of her long coarse hair is almost overwhelming against Furiosa's cheek. It calls on a deep sense-memory that leaves her trembling for a breath. She waits a moment for Furiosa to gain her bearing, then without a word turns to lead her to a nest of packs and blankets propped across three bikes. 

Furiosa balks. She's slept in barracks, in rigs, in vehicles with piles of war boys snoring or weeping in her ears. She's slept under the sky, exhaustion claiming her and her fingers twitching against her trigger, loaded weapons and swift sharp blades her companions. She has slept with the whispers of her desperate and naive charges plucking nervously at her heart as the war rig rumbled through the baking sun under the hands of an un-named and unpredictable man. She fears nothing under this unrelenting sky, but the gleaming moonlight reflecting from these women's patient, steady gazes brings her up short.

"You needn't join, of course," the white-haired Keeper of the Seeds says matter-of-factly. "We will wait for you, even if you never choose to come."

"I…" _can't, I don't know how, I can't be anything now that what I was is drowned in mud and murdered by crows_ , Furiosa doesn't stammer. She can make out three of the Vuvalini sleepily entwined in the nest, their corded arms resting with a casual assurance over one another's hips. There is a fourth person there, she sees on second glance, the slight form of Toast obscured by the tumbled clothes around them all. The fifth Vuvalini is hunkered down along the ridge, her rifle a stark silhouette against the stars.

The Valkyrie snorts with impatient humor, sweeping her dark covering off her shoulders and draping it over the feet of the women in the pile. She reaches her hand out toward Furiosa's cheek, and Furiosa can't stop herself from leaning into it. She can make out the barest crinkle of the Valkyrie's crow's feet as she stalls for time.

Furiosa can feel the ache in her bones pooling into the ache in her belly, her shoulders tense as she steels herself to meet the Valkyrie's bold, straightforward invitation. She's had no room in her heart for fear for many years. 

The Valkyrie's fingers dig with surprising force into her elbow above the straps of her arm. There's a forgotten bruise there, and the pressure brings it singing to life in her nerves. Furiosa presses in, her chin cradled in confident, sturdy hands, and lets her teeth lead her to those smirking lips.

The Valkyrie tastes like stale water and salt spice. It's comforting and interesting, and somewhat confusing. Furiosa can't remember a time when another person touched her with such purpose and interest and lack of jarring violence. The kiss is simply a kiss, for its own sake. It's dry, and stark, and she feels something greedy inside her stirring. For the first time, Furiosa finds herself… curious. 

A warm chuckle escapes the pile of women. The Valkyrie's answering chuckle is enough to unlock something in Furiosa, and she falls to her knees for the second time that day. This time, it's not unforgiving sands that greet her, but struggling, welcoming arms and the low laughter and sweet caresses of women who may, tomorrow, be hers.


End file.
